Paint It Black
by MorpheusDreams
Summary: Severus Snape character study. Unrequited SS/LE. Reworking of a previously posted SS/JP slash story of the same title to fit cannon.


Paint it Black

Each and every spring it happens. He's tried everything in his power to harden himself against the bombardment of memories but short of obliviation, nothing works. So it goes, and everyone in the castle, himself included, must endure.

As the weather turns warm his diligently kept schedule is constantly disrupted by the need to chastise overly amorous students engaging in decidedly spring-like activities. At first he takes great pleasure in pulling couples from their hiding places and ruining their fun.

It takes several weeks before each blushing couple he flushes out of hiding becomes a strike upon his carefully constructed façade, each kiss he witnesses tears at his hard won control; by the time spring slips into summer and the children are finally gone, he is left shattered. The annual display of smiles and flushed cheeks; of batting eyelashes and giggles becoming a key that unlocks emotions he has spent the better part of twenty years trying to burry.

Far too to proud to let anyone see him as anything other than the hard man he presents himself to be, he leaves the school as soon as he is able, retreating to the small, filthy house at Spinner's End.

As much as he hates the house: hates the memories locked within its crumbling walls, hates the ghosts that linger, he is unable to escape it. It is the only place that is truly his, the only place where he is in absolute control. It is the only place where he will allow himself to remember the past fully; where he allows himself the luxury of shedding his crumbling masks so that he may set to work rebuilding them.

Once safely ensconced in the house, he is consumed by recollections of love and betrayal, of hurt and jealousy, and a hate he is incapable of releasing.

It is only here where he lived when he first met her that he sheds what is left of his pride and surrenders to the weight memory.

SS SS SS

His mother doted upon him in his youth. He knew his mother loved him fiercely, and she spent much of her life trying desperately to counteract the damage done to his young psyche by his abusive father. Telling him constantly how proud she was of him, how smart he was, and how handsome he was to her: that his beautiful eyes were his best feature.

Even as a child he was aware of how unusual he looked, and would scowl and tell her that he knew he was unsightly and that no one would ever look past his over-large roman nose or his stringy black hair.

"Severus, my child," she would reply "you have the most beautiful eyes. One could get lost in their depths."

He morosely wonders if things would have been different had she lived long enough to help him through his teenage years.

SS SS SS

He had just turned eleven when he met Lily Evans in the park. He'd been astonished to see two children, who were clearly muggles, playing in the disused square across the river from his house. His curiosity piqued, he made his way across the water and watched them from behind a bush. He never thought of approaching them. He was well aware of how other children reacted to his appearance. His clothes were shabby, and his hair was over-long. He knew he had the look of being slightly out of time, and that made other children nervous around him. He'd become acustomed to the fact that no one ever wanted to play with the sullen dark haired boy.

From his hiding place under a patch of brambles he watched the two girls for quite some time, and came to the realization that they were sisters, though to be truthful they looked nothing alike. He paid no mind to the smaller and darker of the two. It was the older who fascinated him. She had dark red hair and emerald green eyes, and he was quite taken with the look of her. After a while his patience was rewarded with a name. Lily. He'd heard her sister call her Lily.

He played with her name in his mind, rolling the sound of it through his head over and over as he endured the brambles for a while longer so as to watch her. Then it happened.

Lily had been sitting on the ground, face screwed up in concentration when she'd done it. "Petunia, look," she gasped in self-amazement as she summoned her sister. "Look, I did it again." All around her were dozens of flowers, daylilies and petunias growing where moments ago there was bare earth.

Severus could not contain his gasp of amazement.

"Stop it Lily!" Petunia sounded horrified. "Stop right now or I'll tell Mummy."

Lily seemed unfazed by her sisters' horror. She'd heard his gasp of surprise, and after several moments of scanning the corners of the park she stood, flowers forgotten, and walked right to where he was hiding.

She made him crawl out from under the brambles.

"You're a witch," he told her without hesitation as he stood. 'You're a muggle-born witch." He beamed at her with wonder, and pride, and felt something unidentifiable to him at the time blossom in his chest.

They became inseparable that summer.

As the beginning of the school year loomed, he began to worry about being separated from her, as she'd said nothing to him about receiving her Hogwarts letter. When her birthday finally arrived, he was beside himself with relief and excitement when she proudly presented him with her acceptance letter from Hogwarts.

The thought of starting a new school with his best friend beside him made him much more comfortable about leaving his mother behind.

SS SS SS

Separated by Houses, they'd found their friendship strained by public opinion.

Ever stubborn, they'd resisted as much as they could, though it was hard for both of them. The older members of Slytherin harassed him daily; his roommates stole his personal effects and he was constantly teased about his appearance. He was sure that Lily received similar treatment from the Gryffindors but she never spoke of it.

She was always more the firebrand than he. It was she who defended him against the Gryffindors, and she who reassured him when classmates harassed him about the way he looked, or the state of his robes.

Lily alone was the only one to comment upon the beauty of his eyes beyond his mother.

She'd found him near to tears under a tree one afternoon after Bellatrix Black had cheerfully announced that a girl would have to be blind to want to kiss anyone so vile as he. The whole of the common room had erupted in laughter, with no one stepping up in his defense.

Lily had embraced him, she leaned back to study his face. Then she began to describe to him what she saw. "I see a proud face, a stubborn chin, and a strong nose." She leant in to kiss the tip of his nose. "I see hair as black as the wing of a raven, shiny and sleek, not greasy, and baby soft." She reached up and stroked his hair. "I see eyes that speak of friendship, and loyalty, and such sadness." She stopped, and swallowed hard, reaching a hand up to cup his cheek. "You really do have beautiful eyes Severus. I never really noticed before."

To this day he can still hear her, and wishes she'd really meant it all.

SS SS SS

His mother died when he was fourteen, and a little bit of him died with her, and he changed.

The subsequent summers home with his father were torturous affairs, made bearable only by the fact that Lily was always in the park when he needed her.

Lily learned to set bones the summer he turned fifteen.

The summer he turned sixteen he realized he was in love with Lily Evans.

The following school year she broke his heart.

SS SS SS

He could not help the way he felt about Lily, and thinking back to the afternoon under the tree he thought that perhaps she felt the same about him. He was wrong.

He learned quickly that year that there is truth to the adage "_The eyes are windows to the soul_"; he also learned how easily those windows could be shattered.

He tried to hide his feelings, tried not to let his longing show, but Lily could see, and it made her uncomfortable. She began to spend less and less time with him, and more time with her own housemates: particularly the little group calling themselves The Marauders. As a result he became more and more depressed, taking to reading anything he could get his hands on that would provide an escape for his mind.

When they were together, Lily would gently scold him about his reading material. She'd noticed how his interests had turned a corner toward the Dark.

Others had noticed too. James Potter and Sirius Black had taken notice and had decided to make him the latest target of the Marauders pranks.

As if it wasn't bad enough that Black's little prank almost cost him his life, it was Lily's choice to remain loyal to the marauders and their pet werewolf that broke his heart, and shattered their friendship.

The proverbial knife in his heart was twisted when Lily began to openly date James.

SS SS SS

He'd nearly killed himself the summer after: between the experimental potions and the dark magic. He worked ceaselessly until he was successful in permanently shuttering the orbs which Lily had once called beautiful: ensuring that no one would ever see into the depths of his soul again. He counts himself lucky he did not make himself blind.

He spent his last two years as a student enduring torture at the hands of the marauders. Sirius was to blame mostly, but James joined in occasionally, and Lily did little to stop it, devastating his psyche in ways he still has not managed to understand.

His fragile emotional state left him vulnerable in ways he'd never imagined, and he fell prey to the web of lies Lucius wove. He let the Dark Lord Mark him the summer he turned eighteen.

SS SS SS

When the news that James and Lily were expecting reached him, he was consumed with jealousy. Jealousy quickly turned to hatred which lodged, inflexible, within his heart.

When Lily was killed two years later, partly due to information he supplied to the Dark Lord he had a breakdown of sorts. He grieved Lily as though he still loved her, and his conscious got the better of him. He sought out Albus and told the old man everything. In the end offering himself as spy in retribution for the life of the woman he knew he would always love.

SS SS SS

Then the Harry came to Hogwarts, with eyes so like his mother's that his world is rocked off its axis.

He sees the signs of abuse in the boy, sees the pain in his eyes, and it kills him to know that he is in some ways responsible. He knows he should reach out, but he is locked firmly into his role as spy: a pawn in the great game between Dumbledore and the Dark Lord. So he vows to protect the boy the only way he can.

He torments the boy, making it clear to all taking notice that he would in no way aid the child. In the mean time he brushes up on his counter-curses. He spends his time watching and waiting; unraveling traps and defusing spells. He tries to prepare the Harry as best he can without forfeiting both of their lives.

He hopes Lily will forgive him.

SS SS SS

It takes him most of the summer to recover from spring in the castle. He wakes often, in the dead of night, shaken by the voices whispering to him in his dreams. _"Such beautiful eyes,"_ the voices lament. Sometimes he hears his mother, other times it is Lily who cries out to him. On those nights he wakes and allows himself to grieve over the loss of their deep cerulean blue.

He stands for hours in front of the fireplace and indulges himself. He wonders if his colleagues would care to learn that he was not born with eyes the color of onyx, as he has heard them described, and if they'd be surprised to know that he once was capable of a twinkle that would have rivaled the Headmaster's.

He grieves for the choices he made as an arrogant, angry youth and for the loss of the man he might have become.

He stares into the old mirror that hangs above the mantle, and he reigns in each wayward emotion until his face is once again an impassive mask. Finally, he stares down his own reflection, making contact with his own traitorous eyes; until he is certain they reveal nothing.


End file.
